


Viscera

by killaidanturner



Series: Rumination [3]
Category: Being Human (UK), The Almighty Johnsons
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Sex, Blood Drinking, Bloodplay, Dark, M/M, in which Anders is a tragic vampire in love and hates everything about it, vampire!Anders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-12
Updated: 2016-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-13 08:11:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5701264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killaidanturner/pseuds/killaidanturner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a moment everything is beautiful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> literally this will extra make no sense if you don't read parts 1 & 2 which are under 10k. If you read this without them you'll think I was high when I wrote this.

“Anders.” It comes to him in Mitchell’s voice.

 

Darkness. A humming violence.

 

“Anders.” It comes to him in Ty’s voice. He dreams cold, dreams of winter and gooseflesh. Ty who could have became a glacier, who could have caused tears in iron, who could have become something to rival mountains stayed something more gentle, something that can melt.

 

He dreams. He dreams of the sun, of his childhood room. He dreams of the day Axl was born, of Ty’s immediate nature to hold him close. 

 

“Anders.” It comes to him in Axl’s voice. Axl with his heart of gold and nowhere to run with it, with open hands and arms outstretched and no one taking what he is offering. 

 

He dreams of small hands, of science books and toy dinosaurs. He dreams of dust, how it floats in the daylight, slowly in front of open windows. He dreams of laughter, innocent beyond anything else he had ever heard.

 

“Anders.” His mother's strong tone. 

 

He dreams of warmth, of blankets wrapped around him. He dreams of his younger brothers, of their small frames and eyes that looked like they could hold the world. He dreams of being young, before they knew what they were. He dreams of wanting to give his brothers something more than what they had, he dreams that he had given them hope. 

 

“Anders.” Condescending, filled with disapproval and disappointment. Mikkel. 

 

He dreams of shouting, of fists and bruises. He dreams violence.

 

“Anders.” His father. His small arms, his bruised ribs, the development of his wit, the starting of his many layers. His own city that he built, filled with riots and smoke, flame stained walls. He dreams of burning, of wildfires, he dreams of destruction. 

 

_ ‘Do you remember what I told you about the texture of blood?’ _ He dreams a conversation between him and Mitchell. He dreams the texture of silk, of threads coming undone. 

 

Anders tries to find a way to respond, he looks for a word in his mind, but it’s too far gone. He can’t think of the English word for it, or the Norse. He wants to gasp, wants to breathe out, exhale, but he’s finding nothing. His body working against him. 

 

His mind flashes to another conversation, one with Mitchell sitting across from him at diner way off on the south island. Far from their normal standards but Anders had business and Mitchell wanted to tag along.  _ ‘Do you ever dream?’  _ Mitchell had asked him.

 

Anders feels like he’s in the booth all over again, silver plastic sticking to his skin, in the glow of the neon lights and the tacky diner decorations. He looks up to see planets, rocketships, and ufos. The sticky menu covered in syrup with words on it like intergalactic and cosmic. 

 

_ ‘There’s a burger called the Boba Fett. Oh look, an omelette called the Ham Solo.’ _

 

_ ‘You didn’t answer my question.’ _ The dream is hazy, slowed down. Mitchell’s smile is a permanent fixture as he waits in silence for Anders response. 

 

He doesn’t say that sometimes he dreams of being a child or that he dreams about his brothers. Instead he remembers his voice coming out with,  _ ‘I dream about the sky.’ _

 

“Anders.” It shakes the walls in the diner. Saturn goes crashing into the ground, it’s rings spiraling out across the floor.

 

His name comes to him a hundred times over, the chorus of an elegy. 

 

“Anders.” It comes back to him in an Irish lilt. 

 

* * *

“Anders.” Mitchell repeats his funeral song. His voice coming out in ragged gasps. “Anders” He pushes back Anders hair. He sobs violently, as if his ribs might break with each intake of air. 

 

In his animal way he made him something godless. He holds Anders against him, feels the warmth leaving his body. He knows of the feral rage that will consume Anders and he grieves harder at this. 

 

His fingers lightly trace the arch of Anders throat as he thinks nothing will ever be the same. “Anders.” His voice is quieter, smaller sounding to even his own ears. 

 

Hours pass. Mitchell’s throat feels raw, his fingers covered in blood that he smears on his clothes, through Anders sandy hair. He looks around the bathroom at the needle sitting on the floor, the syringe that caused this spiral. He kicks it away and watches it go spinning across the bathroom floor and behind the toilet. He lets out a new cry at this. He wants to get rid of it but he can’t bring himself to let go of Anders. What if he wakes up? 

 

So Mitchell stays frozen, his hands gentle and fluttering like a bird’s wings.

 

He thinks about over a decade ago, to the boy in the bathroom with even smaller wrists. He remembers the time they spent together and how Mitchell had immediately loved him. He remembers clearly how he told Anders that he had to save himself and Anders young voice replying with,  _ ‘I don’t know how.’ _

 

He had always thought Anders could save himself.

 

Maybe it wasn’t about saving, maybe it was about destroying. Maybe it was about killing a monster and this was the only way he knew how to do it, by hurting himself.

 

“I was never any good for you.” It’s a change in verse so his hymn. “You weren’t the horrible thing you made yourself out to be, you weren’t as bad as me, never were. Don’t think you could have ever been.” 

 

He remembers the first time Anders gasped against his skin, his warm breath. He remembers their first kiss, how it was soft yet blaring like the car alarm they had set off. Mitchell remembers Anders younger features, before his face had laughter lines around the eyes or worried creases in his forehead. Mitchell takes a thumb and runs it across the lines resting there as if it will smooth them away, just like the many nights he has done before. As if it would take them both back to something simpler.

 

“Anders.” This time when he says it eyes flutter open.

 

* * *

Mitchell looks into Anders black eyes, how they seem to absorb the light around them. They look empty, vast, a place that doesn’t hold memories or life. He wonders if that is what Anders sees when he looks at Mitchell.

 

There’s something aching about it, Mitchell can’t tell if it’s the tragedy of the situation or that Anders is still just as breathtaking as he once was. 

 

Anders blinks, Mitchell cupping his cheek and running a thumb across the bone, he smiles down at Anders as his eyes fade to blue. Mitchell lets a tear fall as Anders lets out a breath he doesn’t need, as his soft lips part and cold air escapes. 

 

_ “Anders.”  _ Mitchell says it as if it will save them both.

* * *

 

 

The first thing Anders notices is that his mind is silent, there is no longer a litany of gunfire, no casualties of war.

 

When he hears Mitchell speak clearly for the first time in his new form it is no longer covered in static with residual echoes clinging to it.

 

It’s clear, soft, it swells on vowels. _ “Anders.”  _

  
For a moment everything is beautiful.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders listens to his mind and the cacophony of silence. He never knew it could be so deafening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a constant conversation in my life is how many metaphors about space can I fit into my fics? With each new piece of writing I like to challenge myself. thanks nasri for the encouragement

**11 Years Ago**

 

Mitchell opens up the door to the lecture hall. He takes a seat in the back of the classroom, a professor stands at the front of the room, a piece of chalk in their hands.

 

“What does it mean to be human?” His english accent rolled of his tongue,  _ Northern _ , Mitchell thought as he watched the man walk from one side of the room to the other.

 

“All of you have taken prereqs to this class, psychology classes, surely you must know.”

 

A young girl with a thin frame and long brown hair stands up. “Being human means that we can show empathy.” She immediately sits back down in her seat, her hands in her lap.

 

“Ah but can’t animals to show compassion? Show empathy? So the question again, what does it mean to be human? Are we human because we often times do not practice what we preach?” Mitchell shifts uncomfortably in his seat at the words. 

 

“ On what is that assumption based? Its cultural origins lie in the idea that humans are a unique species with a particular relationship to what, in the Timaeus, Plato calls 'the Father of the universe.' So is it religion that defines us? Or something more?”

 

Another student stands up. “I don’t believe it’s religion. There are plenty of different religions in the world and even those who choose not to have one. I don’t think that makes anyone less human. Some Biblical entity isn’t going to make me anymore more or any less. That would be like saying if you don’t belong to a religion then you don’t have a soul.” The student sounds offended at the idea and Mitchell can’t help the smirk on his face. He taps his foot as he listens to the conversation.

 

“Others would argue that it is exactly what makes us human. We are the only creatures on this planet to have a religion, to worship a divine being. So what makes us human?” Mitchell for a moment wonders if in a way Anders had made him human. If worship is the case then he knows for a moment in his life he worshiped Anders and if he could do it again then he would welcome that humanity sevenfold.

 

Another student stands, a young man with sandy blonde hair and tanned skin. Mitchell sits up in his seat, leaning forward. _It can't be._ “The ecological self.” And it isn't, not with a thick cockney accent.

 

“Someone has been studying the environment.” The professor says with a smile.

 

“The ecological self is  that through the process of self-actualisation, one transcends the nations of the individuated "egoic" self and arrives at a position of an ecological self.”

 

“So we take care of the planet and in turn that makes us human?”

 

“It’s the understanding that we are at the top of the pyramid. There’s humans and then there’s nature, that’s it.” 

 

“Are you a transfer from the University of London?” 

 

“Yes professor.”

 

Mitchell doesn’t listen to anymore, he slips out of the back of the class, pulling his hood up over his head as he exists. He should have known it wasn’t what he was looking for, that an answer to his question would be held in some university class. 

 

What he doesn’t hear is this, “what makes you human is your choices. Not the consequences of the matter, not whether what you are doing is good or bad. Morals don’t factor into it. Laws are set in place but who are we to define these laws. We are not in an abiding agreement with the Earth when we were put here, so again, what makes you human? Your stream of consciousness, your good and not so good thoughts, and whatever actions you may take. That makes you human.”

 

* * *

**Now**

 

_ ‘What does it mean to be human?’  _ Mitchell had turned the thought over in his mind countless times.

 

In this moment he narrows it down to this, what does it mean to be  _ less _ than human?

 

It lays out in the scene before him, in the form of a vampire with striking blue eyes and tanned skin. It’s here in the blood on his hands and the absence of beating hearts. He figures it’s something he’s learned over time, that the creature inside him ensures that he never reaches what he wants. That it is the one causing ruby rivers of sin.

 

* * *

Anders is cautious as he reaches up to touch the side of Mitchell’s face, his hands slow and searching.

 

For a moment he thinks of the gods, he wonders as he looks at Mitchell if the gods built creatures out of shattered stars, broken and crumbling, with iron veins. 

 

There is no longer a scavenger of dead languages crawling at the inside of his skull, scratching the walls and thinking of elaborate ways to tell Anders off. He reaches out and touches Mitchell’s cheek with gentle purpose as if he’s feeling his skin for the first time.

 

He's searching a word that he can't seem to find, it stretches in his mind into something unfathomable. He looks into Mitchell's eyes and sees ghosts there. He looks at Mitchell's eyelashes, takes in the dramatic curve of them, their long sweep and how they cast shadows in the right light. 

 

The hollow of his throat, his fingertips, a siren's call.

 

Anders swallows and the sound is almost painful to his ears, too loud. He winces in pain and looks around. He takes a breath and feels the hollowness in his chest. He pulls at this shirt, tearing the fabric open. He claws at his flesh, his nails digging in. He punctures his skin until blood swells. Mitchell is reaching for his wrist, pulling Anders’ hands away from himself. 

 

“What are you doing?!” Mitchell shouts at him, Anders hands still in his own. Anders looks at him with wide eyes.

 

“There’s nothing beating, there’s nothing.”` Anders voice comes out haunted and Mitchell understands this ballad all too well. His heart and all of its chambers and valves are at a standstill.

 

“I know.” Mitchell pulls him closer, takes one of his smaller wrists and places a kiss to the veins there. Anders watches him with curiosity before he pulls his hand away. 

 

“What did you do?”

 

“Anders you were dying, I saw a golden light leave you, your heart beats were really slow and there was no way an ambulance was going to make it in time.” 

 

“I know there was golden light leaving me! That was Bragi! That was the plan!” Anders shouts at him as he stands up from off of the floor. 

 

It takes a moment for Mitchell to respond, he scrunches up his face then looks up at Anders slowly. “What do you mean plan?”

 

“I get a little heroin, I shoot it up, heart stops, Bragi leaves and Michele comes in with a shot of adrenaline to save the day.” Anders lays it all out before Mitchell as if it should have been the most obvious plan in the world, as if Anders would really kill himself.

 

“You were trying to strip yourself of Bragi and you didn’t even think to tell me?” Mitchell is getting up to his feet now, smearing blood on the wall as he stands. 

 

“It was none of your concern.”

 

“None of my concern?! Anders look at this fucking situation!” Mitchell throws his hands out indicating to the crime scene in their bathroom.

 

“I had it under control!”

 

“No, you clearly didn’t!”  

 

“Watch, Michele is going to walk in at any moment and-”

 

“Anders, you died over five hours ago. Michele never came, and if she did now it would have been too late. You would have been dead.” Mitchell loses the heat that was building inside of him. When Mitchell tries to talk to Anders it's like Rome’s armies retreating, as if he could see Anders himself lighting the city on fire and tearing it down brick by brick, lost in a black haze and bloodlust for his own burning.

 

“What?” Anders knows he heard Mitchell but he can’t wrap his mind around the situation.

 

“She would have been too late.” If Mitchell could break he feels like it would be in this moment. That his ribs would collapse underneath the pressure.

 

Anders slides down the wall to sit down on the floor again. “She told me, she fucking told me she would be here and that this plan would work.” Anders mind starts spinning as he thinks of what could have held the goddess up, or perhaps if she never had any intentions of coming at all. 

 

“Do you think she would have-”

 

“No she wouldn’t want to explain this to Mike, then again if I was dead from an overdose they would have never known she had a hand in it. Fuck, I don’t know with her. I don’t know. She’s a fucking doctor, it just, I don’t know. I don’t know.” Anders eyes go far off as he keeps repeating the words on his lips until the words die off altogether. 

 

* * *

_ “True gods need blood.”  _ It’s a memory. At the time it was some bat-shit fucking crazy nonsense that seemed to be a constant stream out of Loki’s mouth. Anders is starting to wonder if there was truth to it.

 

* * *

Falling in love with Anders was like falling in love with a nebula. You spend your time waiting for a catastrophic explosion. Mitchell thinks of the words  _ dramatic violence _  as he looks at the shreds of fabric and blood between them, at their war ravished bodies.

 

* * *

Mitchell doesn’t know how much time passes before Anders speaks again. He supposes that it is hours though, that it must be some time in the middle of the night at this point.

 

“My mother told me a story once, I probably should have known then.” Anders says with his feet out in front of him as he continues to sit on the cold bathroom floor. Though he supposes it doesn’t feel so cold to him anymore.

 

“What was that?” Mitchell asks quietly, as if a higher pitch would startle Anders. 

 

“That when the gods weren’t looking people became animals.” Anders finally looks at Mitchell.

 

“You think she was talking about things like us?” 

 

“ _ Us? _ ” Anders lets out a huff of air, a forced exasperated laugh. “Us. Yeah I suppose she was referring to things like us.” 

 

“I’m s-”

 

“Don’t.” Anders hits the back of his head harder than necessary against the bathroom wall. He pulls his knees up to his chest and bites the inside of his cheek. 

 

Anders listens to his mind and the cacophony of silence. He never knew it could be so deafening.

 

* * *

Anders is pulling up hazy memories.

 

He remembers in uni a girl with a mouth to match his but who loved books and poetry more than he ever cared to. He remembers lying on her bed after doing a line and letting the drug work its way into his bloodstream.

 

“Drowning.”

 

“What?” He asks turning his head towards her.

 

“Drowning. If I had to die, I would drown. It’s kind of like you get to choose it. It’s not heroic but I think drowning would be the easiest.” She’s looking up at the ceiling with a copy of book of some poems, Anders tries to read the name on the spine and comes up with Plath. “What would you do?” She turns to ask him, red hair falling into her face. He knows he wouldn't drown, not with the pain of gasping for air. He doesn't like the idea of waves pulling him under, sea foam and shores. He never really thought that there was danger in the coast line but maybe that's why drowning is a choice in this case.

 

Sitting on his bathroom floor he thinks that maybe there are different forms of drowning and that was something he just didn't used to understand.

 

* * *

They stay like that through the night, neither one of them speaking. The distance between them stretched out like a fissure, expanding itself into a void in all of it’s colossal grief.

 

Mitchell keeps wanting to say,  _ I’m sorry _ , the words a constant eulogy playing at the tip of his tongue. 

 

Anders doesn’t know if he should apologize, he sure as fuck doesn’t feel like it. There’s a gnawing part of him that is screaming out, saying that part of this is his fault, but he was never very good at taking the blame. He wonders if he can say,  _ I don’t blame you, I would have done the same.  _

  
In the wrinkled and torn up pages of history they will both be remembered as monsters of the guilty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jf;sldf just pretend like I know what I was talking about with the whole freaking ecowhatever cause I was like OH BOY


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How he came back to summer nights that smell like dying, to swelling eyes that changed like the tide, to a mouth that could fit a tsunami of words and hurt.

“I think it’s morning.” 

 

“Does that even matter anymore?” Anders looks at Mitchell with unblinking eyes, his joints stiff from not moving throughout the night.

 

* * *

There was never a successful theory of everything because of all of Einstein's equations use time and time is just a concept, it's not tangible. Not when your heart stops beating but the weight in your chest is still there.

 

* * *

“I’m going to take a shower.” Anders finally breaks the silence between them. Mitchell nods his head and shuts the bathroom door quietly behind him.

 

Anders undresses slowly, his shirt sticking to his skin with dried blood. He turns on the water, turns it as hot as it will go until it burns against his skin. He thinks that it will wash away the cold clinging to his bones. 

 

When he is in the shower he thinks of his childhood, and how the night isn’t made for children. Isn’t made for boys with static in their minds and velvet trimmed hope clinging to their eyelids. Maybe his mouth spent too many years shadowing his brothers worry for him. 

 

He remembers being taught some shitty fucking phrase that went something like, “all things must end.” He figures it's true in a way. That one night stand? That has an end. The high after doing a line? That unfortunately has an end. The large pizza with extra sauce because Mitchell thinks there is never enough? That ends. Dreams end, deteriorate, decay.

 

When Mitchell left all those years ago, what Anders felt had never ended. It just went to a different place inside of him, somewhere where it could stay. Just a quiet reminder until Mitchell returned, with his horrible taste in clothes and his too many cigarettes and his shitty day time television. How he came back to summer nights that smell like dying, to swelling eyes that changed like the tide, to a mouth that could fit a tsunami of words and hurt. 

 

He lets the water hit his back, caress the stiff muscles stretched under his skin as he wonders if this blood thirsty gnawing feeling tugging at the once thick strings of his heart will end.

 

* * *

“Why did you do it? I thought that you wanted to be a god?” Mitchell is leaning against the wall in the hallway, his eyes dark and sharp as he watches the towel hanging loose on Anders hips.

 

“I did, for a while I did. Back before you came back into my life like a fucking whirlpool, or a tornado, fuck maybe even a black hole. Then he became too loud, I didn’t know what thoughts were mine and what were his anymore.” He points to his head briefly before he continues walking to the bedroom.

 

It stays unspoken between them, ‘I didn’t know if I love you or if it was him’.

 

* * *

“I’m going to go see Mike.” Anders comes out the bedroom fully changed into jeans and a button down.

 

“About this?”

 

“No, maybe. I don’t fucking know. I guess I’ll see when I get there.” He walks into the bathroom to fix his towel dried hair and stops dead in his tracks as he looks into the mirror.

 

The reflection is empty. Mitchell watches him cautiously as Anders reaches out with one hand and touches the steamed mirror. He takes his hand and wipes away the condensation only to look at the reflection of the blood on the wall behind him.

 

“For fucks sake!” Anders shouts as Mitchell walks into the bathroom.

 

“It can take some getting used to.” 

 

“Really? Fucking Sherlock Holmes over here telling me that it can take some getting used to. Is Scotland Yard here to take notes? Ok Count Dracula, tell me then how long did it take you to get used to it?” 

 

Mitchell doesn’t reply, instead he walks forward and opens up the cabinet behind the mirror pulling out Anders hair gel. He undoes the cap and puts some on his fingertips. Anders is staring at him with a tight jaw, waiting for an answer. Mitchell runs his hands through Anders hair, combing it in the way that he knows Anders likes. 

 

He can see Anders shoulders relax and his back loosen as he leans into Mitchell’s touch. Mitchell slows his movements, not wanting this to be over too soon. He knows that new vampires are erratic with their behavior, he remembers how he was and he wants nothing more than to make this as painless as he can. 

 

“You’ll need to wear your sunglasses outside.” Mitchell’s voice is quiet, barely a whisper. Anders nods his head in agreement as Mitchell finishes moving around strands.

 

“You better not have made me look stupid.” 

 

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Mitchell leans down and places a gentle lingering kiss to his forehead.

 

* * *

“You don’t have to come.”

 

“Kind of do.” Mitchell says with a tight smile. 

 

Anders nods his head in understanding. “Right, so I don’t rip out anyones throat while walking down the street?”

 

Anders stands at the door, his hands clenched at his sides. He’s not ready to face the ugly things waiting on the other side of it.

 

* * *

Anders walks with aviator sunglasses on and his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

 

“I’ll wait outside, yeah?”

 

“What if I try to kill him?” Anders asks with a smirk.

 

“I might let you.” Mitchell winks but then quickly retracts his statement. “I’ll be listening, I’ll step in if I need to.”

 

Anders nods his head in agreement before pushing open the doors to Mike’s bar. It hasn’t opened yet and luckily it's just Mike behind the counter cutting up limes to prepare for the day.

 

“If you’ve come to take my liquor you can just turn around right now.”

 

“Please, like I need any cheap shit you have in this bar.”

 

“What is it Anders?” His name comes out as a permanent sigh from Mike’s lips.

 

Anders shrugs as he sits down on a bar stool.

 

“Well you look like fucking shit.”

 

Anders tests the waters with a lie. “Mitchell and I got into a fight.” 

 

Mike stops cutting the limes to look up at Anders, at the bags under his eyes. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

 

Anders shakes his head no. 

 

“You know I saw the moment that you stopped believing in love, you were seven.”

 

“Please don’t go there.” Anders groans as he puts his arms on the bar and rests his head on top of them. He thinks that if he closes his eyes maybe it will wish away this conversation.

 

“For once in your fucking life can you listen to me?”

 

Anders doesn’t reply.

 

“It was the first time you really saw the fights at home, how our mother was treated. You were so small and I always knew it was going to happen, there was nothing that I could do to stop it. When you stopped believing, it changed you Anders, it made you who you are. When you scraped your knees when you were outside playing, you stopped crying. You stopped feeling things the way other kids did because of it. I don’t know what you used to be like with Mitchell, but Ty tells me he was around after you had turned 21 and he’s back in your life again. And fuck Anders if he doesn’t make you believe in it then I don’t think anyone or anything ever will. You fucking push this guy to a breaking point constantly and yet he stays. He sees something in you the rest of us sure as fuck don’t. You should be happy someone loves you.”

 

Anders lifts his head up. He can hear Mike’s heart beating just a little bit faster now, his blood rushing from the adrenaline. He focuses past that noise though, and on the sound of the clock ticking on the wall instead. It’s enough for him to be able to string something together to say.

 

“Thanks Mike, great fucking talk. Oh and don’t fucking lecture me about the people in my life.” Anders pushes the barstool away but not before grabbing a bottle of vodka and walking out the door of the bar.

 

Anders knows there is truth to it though, that’s what hurts him the most. 

 

* * *

“How did it go?” Mitchell meets up with Anders outside of the bar.

 

Anders shakes the bottle in Mitchell’s face. He pulls out his raybans and puts them on. “How the fuck do you think it went?” 

 

“We can talk about it when we get home.”

 

“We can but we won't.”

 

* * *

_ “You should be happy someone loves you.” _

 

He guesses that he always knew that Mike never did, even under all that family bullshit.

 

* * *

“Just tell me.” Mitchell is sitting on the arm of the couch as he watches Anders walk into the kitchen.

 

“It was stupid. We didn’t even talk about what I wanted to. I couldn’t even tell him. He’s so fucking selfish.” Anders pours himself a glass of vodka, top shelf he notices from the label. He nods his head in approval before taking a sip.   
  


“What did you talk about then?”

 

“He gave me this big grand speech about love. It was tragic and frankly disgusting.” Anders squints his eyes and nods his head as he speaks.

 

“It can’t be that bad maybe if you just-”

 

“I am so sick of people telling me what I should and shouldn’t do.” Anders slams his glass against the counter harder than he intends, the pieces go shattering around him and onto the floor. He doesn’t move, not even with glass in his hands and blood seeping out of the cuts. “You were a million bad fucking choices, and I knew you were but I suppose I was a well. You made me feel something that the highs didn’t. Made me feel a different type of reckless. People like you are easy to love Mitchell, with you wide smile and your fucking laugh. Fuck how I hate your laugh, Bragi used to compare it to birdsong.” Anders shakes his head and looks up at the ceiling before speaking again, “I fucking hate it because he was fucking right.”

 

A part of him wants Mitchell to hurt, wants him to hurt the way Anders always has, like how he is hurting now. He wants this new hands to destroy, to feel a terrible rush of power. 

 

Mitchell doesn’t know what to say, but the smell of blood, even if it is vampire blood is starting to fill up the room. “Anders, your hand.” 

 

Mitchell is over to him in a few quick strides, lifting up his fingers and pulling out pieces of glass. Anders is lost, he swimming in the dark in unknown waters. 

 

“Does it still appeal to you?” Anders voice comes out deeper than he intended as his eyes stay locked on his own blood.

 

“Always.” Mitchell replies as he grabs a kitchen rag and pushes it on one of the deeper cuts to stop the bleeding. 

 

There is a song erupting somewhere down along Anders spine at Mitchell’s voice.

 

“You could, you know if you wanted to.” When Mitchell looks at Anders it's to see that his eyes have turned completely black. Mitchell takes it as not Anders speaking to him but the monster instead. 

 

Mitchell shakes his head ‘no’ and presses down on the rag a little harder, enough so that Anders eyes change back to blue. 

 

Mitchell is starting to think that this will kill them both. 

 

* * *

“You should get some rest.” Mitchell says after the bleeding has stopped.

 

“Yeah, alright. You're sleeping on the fucking couch tonight.” Anders starts unbuttoning his shirt as he walks down the hallway. 

 

Mitchell calls out to him, “do you remember before your twenty-second birthday, how you told me what you wanted was to explode? You wanted to be a firework or whatever and I laughed and asked you what colour,”

 

“-and I said, ‘I would be the colour of your eyes, a whole fucking sky filled with black’.”

 

“And when I asked you why, you said it was because my eyes were the colour of loving someone and not being loved back.”

 

“I must have been really high.” Anders says with a still frame as his eyes stay focused on Mitchell.

  
“I just wanted you to know that your eyes are that colour as well.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hasjfda what am i doing??? apparently creating the britchell version of heim theory. except loads more tragic.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I want you to hate yourself John Mitchell. I want you to look at me and remember every horrible thing you’ve ever done.”

Anders lays in his bed, sheets wrapped around his waist as he stares at the ceiling. 

 

He smells the stench of clorox coming from under the bedroom door. He gets out of bed and walks out into the hall. The light is on in the bathroom with the door cracked open. He pushes open the door to see Mitchell with a container of clorox cleaning up the blood. He looks at the bright yellow gloves on Mitchell’s hands, how off putting the whole situation is. 

 

“How many times have you done this before?”

 

Mitchell doesn’t know if he means cleaning up the blood or killing, he replies either way, “too many.”

 

“Wash your hands and come to bed. I don’t want you making the sheets smell.” Anders walks out the bathroom with silent movements. Mitchell is behind him moments later.

 

When Mitchell lays down in bed next to him it's like going down in an elevator too fast and you get a rush of vertigo. It's a completely unnecessary feeling but it's there nonetheless.

 

Mitchell listens to the silence, to the absence of a beating heart and regrets that he ever thought that he could tame the shape of his demons, his ghosts, all the things that haunt him long enough to be able to love. 

 

Mitchell turns to face Anders and Anders turns to face the wall, pulling his hands up close to his chest. 

 

“Why did you leave all those years ago?” Anders voice is quiet but steady.

 

“You know why.”

 

“I want to hear you say it.”

 

“I wasn’t going to stay here after we weren’t together. I wasn’t going to run the risk of running into ghosts, into pieces of myself.”

 

“You know what I did the day after you left? I spent it calculating time, looking at fucking flight departures and trying to guess where you would go. It was the afternoon. It was the time of day that people shouldn’t be thinking about shit like that. I remember the taste of whiskey on my tongue and the burn of coke in my nose and I remember thinking if I could just fucking apologize then maybe you could come back. I’m not good at apologies Mitchell, never have been and probably never will be."

 

“I’m sorry. Honestly, I’ll be sorry every single day.” His words come like the stretch of string on a bow, his apologies the arrow whizzing by. Fast and hard to hear.

 

“You’re always sorry.”

 

“You know that I love you.” Mitchell says it loudly, too loud for the middle of the night.

 

“You have my permission not to.” Anders sounds petulant, he knows he does. 

 

Mitchell sighs and gets out of bed. 

 

“Where are you going?” Anders sits up as he asks it.

 

“Back to the couch.”

 

“But I said you could sleep in here.”

 

“Yeah but I don’t really want to anymore. You know what Anders, I know what it’s like to live with love and what it’s like to live without it. I know how silent they both can be.” Mitchell doesn’t look back as he heads out into the living room. He’s gotten used to holding Anders body at night, even with Anders reluctance at times. He’s gotten used to his fidgeting and his smart remarks before he falls asleep. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands now as he lays out on the couch pulling at the fabric on the blanket he pulled out of the linen closet. 

 

With Anders refusal to touch him Mitchell thinks he understands the emptiness of space, of being a fleck of dust in an endless universe. 

 

* * *

Anders lays in bed once more, and thinks of his drug coated dreams. The dreams he used to have of him and Mitchell. Soft curtains and afternoon kissing, coffee and static music. The swell and burst of being in love. He wonders if all he wanted was the burst, the violent burning. He thinks he doesn’t like this bit of it, the talks and hurtful words.

 

Some of his memories seem hazy and some of them are vivid, like the feel of Mitchell’s tongue between his teeth. 

 

When he sleeps he dreams of the tide, of seaweed tangled in his feet and the wind pushing at the ocean and causing it to feel.

  
  


* * *

In the morning Anders wakes up Mitchell by making loud noises in the kitchen, by slamming cupboard doors and clanking dishes together. Mitchell wakes up and looks at Anders with one eye open.

 

“Oh good, you’re awake. You don’t have to stick around if you think I’m going to go on a murdering spree. If that’s your only reason for staying, you shouldn’t do it. I’ll be fine.” He pours himself a cup of coffee and smiles over the mug at Mitchell.

 

Mitchell sits up quickly at this. “Fuck me Anders, you’ve barely been changed a day and you already think that I want to leave?”

 

“It’s what you’re good at, I just want to give you the option now so it doesn’t happen weeks or months down the line. You can shoot through. Don’t want to remind you of your mistake. Ghosts of your past and all.” Anders takes a sip of his coffee, his face a carefully crafted under veneer. 

 

They’re creating something unholy between them. A creature of their own raising, something that will chew at their ivory bones, nip at their heels. Something that survives off of their emotions, that feeds of their rabid darkness. 

 

“Don’t ever think for one moment that I wanted this for you.” Mitchell says through clenched teeth. He knows it's part monster, the words that are being spewed, but he knows as well part of it will always be Anders. 

 

“Hmm.” Anders clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “So that’s what bullshit tastes like.”

 

“You’re still a fucking prick, you know that right? Do you want to know what you’re in love with?” Mitchell makes it across the room quickly, crowding Anders space and pushing him against the counter, Mitchell's arms encasing him as he grips onto the counter. Coffee splashes over the side of Anders' mug but Anders face remains unmoved. “You’re in love with thinking that you don’t love. Of being numb and pushing people away.” 

 

“You aren’t really people, are you?” Anders voice is quiet, his lips turning up into a forced smirk.

 

“Fuck you.” Mitchell pushes his arms off the counter, forcing himself back and out the door with a slam. 

 

Anders slams his coffee mug against the wall, ceramic and black shattering in pieces. “I told you that you were good at leaving!” He shouts through the wall hoping that Mitchell can still hear it. 

 

* * *

Anders spends the rest of the day watching the sun change positions in the sky. He checks his emails and sends approvals to Dawn but doesn’t really move from his position. He waits till nightfall, to when he knows Mitchell is likely to return.

 

When night falls and Mitchell still isn’t home Anders retreats to the bedroom, to empty sheets. 

 

In the middle of the night he hears the front door open. He gets out of bed and walks down the hallway slowly, the only light is the blue glow from the fish tank.

 

He sees Mitchell crouching in front of the tank and tapping the glass lightly. His steps are cautious as he walks up next to him. The first thing Anders notices is a grey fish with a red underbelly and mouth in the tank.

 

“What kind of fish is it?” Anders crouches down next to Mitchell to get a better look.

 

“It’s called a fire mouth.” 

 

Anders looks at Mitchell who gives him a fighting smile, his lips tight as he tries not to laugh at the situation of it.

 

“I’ll call him MJ then.” 

 

“MJ?”

 

“Mitchell JR.” 

 

Mitchell groans as he stands up.

 

“What? I think it’s cute.” Anders stands as well and this is how it goes. They fight, they don’t really know how to say something as simple as I’m sorry without stipulations and implications attached to it. 

 

And Mitchell just happens to love Anders for all of his unapologetic ways. 

 

“Being this thing, what I made you, it is a fucking sickness. It’s like cancer, it keeps spreading and taking you somewhere that you know you can’t fucking come back from. There’s no fucking cure for and I will hate myself every single fucking day for what I’ve done to you.” 

 

“I want you to hate yourself John Mitchell. I want you to look at me and remember every horrible thing you’ve ever done.”

 

“You think that I wasn’t already doing that?” It’s a battle cry ripping through Mitchell’s chest.

 

“No, I really don’t. What you did was selfish.”

 

“I did it because I couldn’t live without you.” Mitchell falls to his knees on the floor. 

 

Anders is already fighting with himself. He rolls his eyes at the scene before him, at Mitchell breaking and wants nothing more than for it to end. A part of him though wants to reach out his hands and use them for comfort. 

 

He knows that with Mitchell something exists between them outside of bedsheets. Anders just doesn’t know if he can kiss them back together, if he can resurrect them like Lazarus. 

 

They’re both small in comparison to each other’s dark. Their mouths swallow the sun, their eyes pulling in all light, just fractals of night and their own bloody constellations. 

 

“I’m only going to say this once. I loved you so much that I could pretend that I didn’t love you at all. So I pretended that it wasn’t going to hurt and I let you break me. I never really got over you leaving. You were the first person I ever loved, there was never anyone after you. I don’t think there ever will be. You fucking know that Mitchell, I don’t know why you make me say it. This constant reassurance bullshit is irritating.” The feeling of bitterness is something too big for his body, how it tries to fight what he feels for Mitchell regardless of what happened. 

 

Mitchell looks up at Anders through wet eyelashes. He clicks his tongue to the roof of his mouth, “so that’s what bullshit tastes like.” 

 

Anders rolls his eyes and holds out a hand for Mitchell to take. He tries not to notice the fit of Mitchell’s hand in his, the size difference of Mitchell’s long and thin fingers and how Anders’ feel in between them. He pulls Mitchell up to his feet, Mitchell who is now grinning like an idiot and Anders doesn’t know if he should smile or punch him.

 

“You might as well sleep in the room tonight, could still hear you snoring from out in the living room so you might as well do it right in my ear. I know I could probably do with the noise.” 

 

“If I start talking about the glow of the moon and how it illuminates your skin, will it remind you of Bragi? But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks-”

 

“This is how you get an invitation to the couch again.” 

 

* * *

When Mitchell wraps his arms around Anders that night  , if either of their hearts could beat they would beat an erratic rhythm of  _ I want, I want, I want. _

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> posting this as much as I can to just rid myself of this tragfest I've created and get them to somewhere less tragic.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anders' name sounds like a crucifix on Mitchell’s tongue, heavy and riddled with guilt

Mitchell falls asleep easily, his eyes still and his hands always reaching. Anders lets arms snake around his waist, lets Mitchell press himself close. He thinks that perhaps Mitchell needs this more than he does, his constant need for touch, for some semblance of reassurance. Anders figures he can give him that at least. 

 

The reality of it hasn’t sunken in with him yet. He can’t wrap his mind around the idea of time, if years will move slow and fast at the same time. If it will come to him in frames or in stop motion, then pick up speed when put on fast forward. He looks at Mitchell, his long eyelashes and his unmoving frame. He thinks of him as a statue, a carefully crafted piece and moved through decades. Each life a different museum. 

 

Anders wonders what it must be like. If there has ever been a day when Mitchell doesn’t know who he is, or was, if disbelief would run through him. If it ever felt like he was being pulled apart at the seams. 

 

He figures that must be the case, that there is a reason why Mitchell was always moving around. He knows he’s killed, but Anders could never really bring himself to care. Not when he comes from a family whose moral compass doesn’t exactly point north.

 

He can’t shake this image, the idea that Mitchell has watched landscapes change. 

 

Being a vampire has a different kind of power to it, a potential to conquer. He knows that Mitchell was different than others, or claimed to be at least. That he fought his own demons, fought the monster within him. He knows that Mitchell has lost that battle more times than he cares to admit and Anders knows the same will be for him. He is now destined to the same graveyard, same ghosts picking away at him. 

 

Mitchell is the kind of guy to make promises. Promises to keep and promises to break. He makes them with good intentions and bad. He has made promises with the intent of breaking them, knowing he would never be able to keep them. It’s a form of comfort, saying ‘I promise’ and giving a vow. He imagines Mitchell making promises, saying that he would change, saying that he would do better. He thinks that has to be how it went, that there was guilt in the form of a beautiful girl and the hope of redemption that laid within a promise. 

 

The only promise Mitchell ever told Anders was that he wouldn’t leave. Anders remembers screaming at Mitchell, at throwing his words back in his face, of that summer so many years ago. He smiles at the memory, of how in love and stupid he was, how he didn’t even realize it.

 

He never really asked Mitchell about the years in between before they saw each other again.

 

He’ll have to ask Mitchell about his past, about everything, learn all of the crimson details. He tries not to groan at the idea of it. 

 

“What’s wrong?” Mitchell mutters with his eyes still closed.

 

“Nothing, go back to sleep.” 

 

“Can’t, you’re thinking so loud I can practically hear you.” Mitchell opens his eyes and searches Anders. 

 

“I’m not doing the whole pillow talk bullshit, we can talk about it at another time.” 

 

“Is it pillow talk if we aren’t inside?” Mitchell runs his hands up Anders arms, traces a pattern to his neck.

 

“What do you mean?” His voice hitches when he feels Mitchell’s featherlight touch tracing his veins. 

 

“Follow me.” Mitchell gets out of bed and grabs his cigarettes and lighter from the bedside table. He doesn’t put on a shirt, or pajamas for that matter, he walks out of the bedroom in skintight pants and Anders admires the view before he is following behind. 

 

On their way out of the front door Anders goes to grab a coat but realizes that he won't need it. They walk to the end of the hallway to the door with a staircase to go between the limited floors. Mitchell pushes the door open and starts taking the stairs two at a time heading up.

 

“Where are we going?” Anders calls up after him, watching Mitchell’s quick movements. Mitchell peers over the side of the staircase, a grin on his face and an unlit cigarette between his lips.

 

“The roof.”

 

“The fucking roof, great.”

 

“This staircase echoes you know.”

 

“You were suppose to hear that.” Anders calls up as he takes the stairs one at a time. 

 

They get to the roof, Mitchell waiting for Anders to catch up before he pushes the door open. It creaks from limited use and rain rusting the hinges. 

 

The sky looks tinted gray and purple, the edges of it glowing yellow from the city lights. Anders follows Mitchell to the edge of the roof where he has taken a seat on the railing, his legs dangling over. Anders his hesitant to sit, his eyes looking at the railing and back to Mitchell.

 

Mitchell pulls the cigarette out of his mouth, “don’t worry I won't let you fall.” He’s the kind of guy to make promises. He holds out his hand and Anders accepts as he climbs onto the ledge to take a seat. The stucco of the building digs into his thighs but he can’t seem bothered to care all that much when Mitchell is lighting his cigarette and taking a drag and looking like the devil himself about to play a card game. 

 

Anders takes in the details of Mitchell, the sharp cut of his jaw, the slope of his nose and smiles to himself.

 

“What?” Mitchell asks as he exhales smoke.

 

“It’s just strange to think you’ve looked this way for so long.”

 

“You mean handsome? Breathtaking? A sexy-”

 

“Disaster, trainwreck-”

 

“Hey!” Mitchell laughs as they smile at each other.

 

“Do you come up here a lot then?” Anders asks as he gestures to the rooftop with a tilt of his head.

 

“Sometimes. When I need to think or when you need your space.”

 

“You mean when I’ve pissed you off.”

 

“That too.” Mitchell’s grin is impish and Anders is thankful. 

 

“I always wondered where you went.”

 

“You never asked.” Mitchell puts the cigarette back between his lips, he narrows his eyes as he takes in Anders smaller frame, his lithe body in nothing but his pants against the city sky backdrop. 

 

“Guess I was, I don’t know, afraid of the answer.” Anders shrugs his shoulders and keeps his eyes focused on the changing color of the traffic lights bellow. 

 

“Well I come up here, sometimes I go to the beach, sometimes the pub but that one isn’t so frequent.”

 

“Why is that?”

 

“I don’t trust myself not to do something stupid.”

 

“Something stupid as in sleeping with someone else or-”

 

“Not that, I would never do that to you. That other thing.”

 

“Oh, you mean rip someone's throat out.”

 

“Yeah, that. Especially after I’ve had a proper row with you.” 

 

“Proper? Is there any other kind?” Anders takes the cigarette from Mitchell, the weight of it dangling between his fingers feels natural. He takes a drag, the smoke filling his lungs. He figures it can’t kill him so why the fuck not. He hands it back as he exhales, as he feels the warmth of it drag across his throat.

 

“Oh yeah, you know how to have a row.” Mitchell smiles, his tight lipped smile as he tries not to pull his lips into a full on grin. His eyebrows knit together, his forehead wrinkling as his eyes turn wide and the deepest shade of brown. It makes him look gentle. It’s stupid and endearing and all of a sudden Anders likes being awake at 2am without alcohol or drugs in his system. 

 

“So, ask me something, maybe then you’ll be able to sleep.” Mitchell knows that there are other ways to tire Anders out but he’s worried about approaching that right now. Not when Anders is like a frayed copper wire, endings exposed and ready to electrocute. He thinks he was lucky to even be invited back into the bed.

 

Anders turns the idea over in his head, he toys with questions. He tries to think of one that won't spawn a hundred more. This is the one that he lets out.

 

“Am I gonna be like you?”

 

“I fucking hope not. I hope you’ll be better. I don’t ever want you to be what I was Anders, I’ve been that creature too many times. I massacred a train car, I killed every single person on there, and that Anders, that was barely a year ago. It’s part of the reason I came back here.” Mitchell stubs the cigarette out on the ledge, gray ash smearing onto the white.

 

Anders works his jaw the way he words his thoughts, he pulls the side of his cheek and bites down. He lets his anger rise and his eyes flash black.

 

“Is that the only reason you came back? Escaping another problem?” Anders will give himself credit for this at least, even without Bragi he’s still brutally truthful. 

 

“Partially. I did always want to know if you were still alive.” 

 

“Why not come back before that then? Why not try to find me sooner?” 

 

“I always wanted to, but I also thought it was best to keep you from me. Turns out I was right.” 

 

Its enough to extinguish the flame of hurt, of the gasoline building inside Anders. His eyes go back to their tidal wave blue as his lips part. “Fuck, Mitchell. Fuck you and fuck this whole situation honestly. I’ll tell you this though, I don’t know if you were right, I honestly don’t. I guess we’ll have to see how it goes.” 

 

“And when you kill someone and I can’t live with myself, when I can’t stand what I’ve turned you into, what then?” His voice is somber, his mind already building a funeral pyre of memories to be replaced with bloodshed. 

 

“I would hope you would help me deal with it. I would hope you wouldn’t turn your back on me like I never have for you. You could have told me about everyone you killed back before you turned me and honestly John I probably would have helped you cover the mess up. I know I would have never been good at stopping you but I would have been good at accepting it. I’m not a good person, I know that but at least I’ve come to terms with it. Maybe if you do as well we can find someway through this.” Anders is standing up now, his voice hoarse from the cool air. 

 

Mitchell stands as well, moving closer to him, his arms reaching to pull Anders to him. “I can’t lose you, not like that. Not to the bloodlust.” Mitchell closes his eyes and presses his forehead to Anders. 

 

He wonders when he became the comforting one, when he became the one to speak reassurances. “I can’t promise that, I can’t promise anything really because well I’ve always been kind of shit at promises.” 

 

Mitchell lets out a small laugh before leaning down, his lips hover above Anders, unsure. 

 

Anders’ fingers move to Mitchell’s waist and pulls him close so their lips finally meet. 

 

His lips are warm to him now, no longer holding remnants of cold to them. It starts out gentle but quickly turns into crushing force and clashing teeth and fingernails digging into skin. Anders didn't realize how much he missed this, Mitchell’s steady hands. 

 

He pulls away, their lips still close, “if you don’t take me inside and fuck me right now I swear I will stake you myself.” 

 

Mitchell grins wicked as he pulls Anders tighter to him, “does that mean you want me to carry you down stairs?” 

 

* * *

Anders' name sounds like a crucifix on Mitchell’s tongue, heavy and riddled with guilt. Anders is in front of him, bent over the bed with his legs spread open. Mitchell strokes Anders’ cock in tandem with his thrusts.

 

“Bite me.” Anders moans out, Mitchell’s hips stuttering against him. “It’s not like you can actually hurt me anymore.” 

 

It’s dangerous, and not in the way that Anders might think. It’s not the first time they’ve done this during sex and it won't be the last, not when Anders is warm and tight wrapped around Mitchell’s cock.

 

He moves a hand against Anders chest to keep him in place, his other hand staying firm and pumping Anders leaking cock. He licks a stripe up Anders neck first, tastes the salt on his skin. He bites down, blood flowing into his mouth. 

 

“Mitchell, Mitchell, Mitchell,” Anders cums a moment later, his release spilling over Mitchell’s hand and onto the bed. Mitchell bites down harder getting lost in it, lost in Anders, it causes a wrecked moan to escape Anders’ lips. He needs to touch him, needs to be close, it’s his own personal tether. It’s harder though to convince yourself you’re human when you’re tether is now born of the same darkness. 

 

The way Anders moans his name makes Mitchell think that it's worth the weight of guilt.

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

Mitchell spends the next morning looking at Anders in bed, crumpled sheets and blood covered skin. The spring-tide of his eyes, the golden summer glow he still seems to have, that he will always be this, never changing. 

 

He assumes the way that he loves Anders is the way that Hades loved Persephone, willing to rip his immortal heart from his ribs and to put it in her milk white hands, to give up his kingdom and crown another. He thinks he should say something along these lines, that the monster lurking in him is trying to crawl out and make them both something terrifying. Seeing Anders like this twists Mitchell’s insides, if he thought that fighting with himself was a struggle then fighting for Anders is worse. The creature in him wants Anders to be darker than himself but Mitchell wants him to be the way that he always was, unapologetic and with a beating heart.

 

“What are you going to tell your brothers?” He asks this to try to take his mind off the sheer want working it’s way through him.

 

“I’m not yet, and as for JPR I’ll continue teleworking until I can go in. I don’t think Dawn minds it as much as she says she does.”

 

“Well when you decide to go back I’ll come with you.”

 

“Want to be my new assistant? May have to ask you to put a skirt on.”  Anders smiles at Mitchell. He doesn’t know yet how he feels about having Mitchell around all the time. He knows that it's to prevent Anders for causing any ‘accidents’ which he is grateful for in a way, but even before he was turned they had time apart and he’s worried about how he is and his track record. He doesn’t want to do something to push Mitchell away, not at a time like this. 

 

“I’ll do it if you give Dawn a week off.”

 

“Really?” Anders is suddenly very interested in the turn the conversation has taken.

 

“Sure, why not? You can bend me over your desk, I’ll even wear lace panties if you want.” Mitchell wiggles his eyebrows and bites his bottom lip. Anders knows that Mitchell is just fucking with him at this point but he also knows if he really wants it then Mitchell will do it for him.

 

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

 

* * *

“I want to talk to Michele, I want to know what happened.”

 

“Ok let's go.” Mitchell stands up and tosses a leather coat over his vest. Anders is thankful that he didn’t grab a track suit jacket. 

 

“I just want you to know I might try to actually kill her.”

 

“And I might let you.”

 

* * *

“You know she's going to immediately tell Mike what happened.”

 

“It’s fine. I’m sure he’ll call a family meeting without me and decide it’s best that no one stays in contact with me. I’ve lived without them before, might be nice to do it again.” 

 

It’s his plan. Confront Michele and let her know what happened, that way she’s the one breaking the news and not Anders himself. She’ll be the bringer of bad news and Anders won't have to deal with the disastrous conversation with his brothers. At least this way he feels like he has the upper hand. 

 

Mitchell knows that Anders is putting on another one of his masks right now. He knows that Anders would miss Ty especially and their unplanned hangouts that don’t involve god business or anything to do with family.

 

* * *

“Michele, so not good to see you again.” Anders sits down in the chair across from her in her office at the hospital. Mitchell shuts the door and stands against it.

 

“What is it Anders?” She closes a patient file and looks at him with trepidation.

 

“Funny you should ask, remember the other night?”

 

“No I fucking don’t, what other night?”

 

“Remember that plan we had, that super secret agreement that we made and you were going to do me a favor and in return I was going to owe you a massive one in return.”

 

“That I remember, yeah. That’s this Wednesday.”

 

Anders pauses, “what? No it’s not, it was last Wednesday.”

 

“No, it’s this Wednesday. I put a reminder on the calendar in my phone.” Michele unlocks her phone screen and shows Anders the calendar with a little note on the bottom that reads, ‘show up at that cock face Anders place with adrenaline needle’.

 

“You got the fucking date wrong, it was this past week.” 

 

“No I didn’t.” Michele shakes her head and puts her phone back in the pocket of her scrubs. “Besides, even if I did it clearly didn’t work, you would have been dead with that mixture I gave you.”

 

“Oh, I am.” Anders leans back in the chair and looks at her, his smile not quite reaching his eyes.

 

Michele stops her movements, her hands frozen as the gears start turning. “You’re fucking joking me.”

 

“Wish I was.”

 

“He turned you?” Michele takes a pen and point at Mitchell as she tries to take in the whole situation, “huh.”

 

“I had no choice.” Mitchell has remained calm throughout the interaction but now he speaks through clenched teeth.

 

“Oh boy, this is too good.” Michele grins at the both of them. “Wonder what a threesome would be like, a goddess and two vampires.”

 

Mitchell moves to take a step forward but Anders is up and out of his chair to step between them. He leans over Michele’s desk. “You can run home and tell Mike, I know you want to. While you’re at it, you can tell him what the whole plan was and your involvement in it.”

 

Michele opens her mouth to say something but then closes it. 

 

“I’ll let you come up with whatever elaborate lie that you want to try to cover up the more gruesome details. It’s better he hears about what you did from your own mouth, maybe you can tell him while he has you bent over since you seem to like that so much. Maybe he’ll be more forgiving that way.” 

 

Anders leaves her office, his hand in Mitchell’s.

 

* * *

Anders doesn’t talk the rest of the day, resigned to checking emails and sipping vodka. Mitchell doesn’t say anything about the time of day, Anders was never one to care. Instead he watches him out of the corner of his eye until the sunsets, until the night sky comes out and they’re laying in bed.

 

“I had a professor, probably the only thing I remember from school really, who said this thing, it was stupid but it stuck with me.” Anders words are slowed, weighed down by the day of drinking.

 

“What was it?” Mitchell turns on his side so he’s facing him.

 

“If you say a word often enough, it becomes your own.”

 

“Do you believe that?”

 

“Kind of.”

 

“What was the word?”

 

“Want.”

 

Want held a lot of things for Anders. Before Bragi he used to say the word want, hoping that it would have that effect. Then when Bragi came along anything Anders could possibly want fell into his lap. Now that Bragi was gone he wondered if the word still held the same meaning, if it was still his word. 

 

He leans over and lightly kisses Mitchell, tender until he can’t take it anymore and is pushing Mitchell onto his back and straddling his legs. He kisses roughly, his nails leaving indentations on Mitchell’s skin. 

 

He pulls back.

 

He looks at Mitchell’s midnight eyes, their endless black depth and thinks that the word is still his. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in which I try to move the plot along


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I think you died long before this.”

Mitchell has spent the last few years trying to figure out how to be human, but with Anders turned it awakens the beast inside of him, giving the monster a name. It wants a burning crown for them both, a violent throne for them to sit upon.

 

“You were a god and you let yourself suffer like a human.” Mitchell’s voice is quiet. He looks up into Anders’ eyes. His knuckles grazing Anders’ cheekbones in the dark of their bedroom.

 

Anders looks away from him, sitting on Mitchell’s lap. His hands fall to Mitchell’s shoulders, away from his hair.

 

It’s strange he thinks that this one word can mean so much to them both.

 

Anders looks back at him, down into Mitchell’s brown eyes. “I want to know what it feels like, I want to know how teeth feel piercing skin.”

 

Mitchell involuntarily rolls his hips at the words, excitement coursing through him at the thought. “Bite me then.”

 

“You want me to?”

 

“It’s safer this way.” He doesn’t say it's because he wants it. That he wants Anders withering in his lip, his mouth filled with blood. He thinks that anders would be beautiful murders, with the pleading of others under his nails and their last prayers burning his throat.  His mind it’s own swirling contradiction. Mitchell’s thoughts and memories are something incapable of a translation, a lost language to his own tongue.

 

When Anders' eyes bleed black he is lost in it, their black depth is an underworld of their own making, walls made out of night.

 

Anders kisses him first, slow and sure. Mitchell’s hands shake as they hold onto the hem of Anders’ shirt. His tongue runs along the fangs, piercing his tongue. Anders’ groans into his mouth, and it tastes like blood, like love. Mitchell growls in his throat, his hips bucking up as he encourages Anders’ along.

 

He trails kisses along Mitchell’s jaw, down his neck, he breathes him in. His hands grip tightly onto Mitchell’s arms, his hips rocking. He runs his tongue along a vein in Mitchell’s neck. They’ve done this enough times the other way around for Anders to understand the concept of it. The thought of blood doesn’t bother him, not the way that it used to. Now he wants Mitchell inside of him, any way that he can get him. He wants to taste the galaxies in his blood, stardust and iron. He wants his blood to run down his fingers the way water slides across skin.

 

He moans when his teeth pierce the crook of Mitchell’s neck. Blood flows into his mouth, sticky sweet and tasting like copper and honeysuckles. He tastes like night, like two am, catastrophe and orange peels. Something entirely him.

 

Mitchell grabs Anders by his hair pulling him back, blood on his mouth, running down his lips, down his chin. He kisses him, smearing blood between them. He’s had this before, his own blood in his mouth but never like this.

 

This is the only empire they will ever build, their barely spoken love for each other. Anders’ body is a language he can translate with his hands. It’s completely savage and will bring both of them to their knees.

 

* * *

 

It takes less than a day to get a call from Mike.

 

“She works fast.” Mitchell looks at the phone lighting up on the coffee table.

 

“For her own selfish gain. The slag doesn’t want me being the one to tell Mike, at least she did the dirty work for me.”

 

“Are you going to answer.’

 

“No. I’ll ring him back later.”

 

“What if he comes over instead?”

 

“Shit.” Anders reaches across the couch and to the table to answer the phone.

 

Static. “We need to talk.”

 

“Always a pleasure to speak to you too Mike.”

 

* * *

 

Mitchell comes with him.

 

Anders was expecting the backlash, expecting all of them to be there. Everything about it is well choreographed, all the key players present and in place. 

 

He saw Ty’s rage, his protectiveness over Dawn. Axl shifting uncomfortably, his shoulders hunched. Olaf and his weary gaze.

 

Mike is the icing on the cake.

 

“You’ve had me leave before, it’s not like this is anything new to me.”

 

“I just think that you should stay away from the family for a while. How do we know it’s safe to be around you? This was a reckless decision Anders-”

 

“Don’t fucking go there with me. This is hardly what I wanted. If your whore of a girlfriend had her fucking dates right then I wouldn’t be in this situation.”

 

Mike puts his hands on the waistband of his jeans, his eyes to the floor before he speaks again. “Michele should have came to us in the first place when you hatched this idea.

 

Mike, the carpenter. Anders thinks that profession was some sort of need to be a martyr, the way that Jesus was a carpenter. He thinks the bar suits him better, the backdrop of the bar, liquor bottle surrounding them. Some people spend their whole lives trying not to be like their parents, some are predestined to it.

 

Anders doesn’t argue anymore, his mouth that creates natural disasters, earthquakes and chasms. He knows this is a fight he can’t win, not with Mike’s protective stance and Ty’s overbearing need to protect Dawn. He can see it in how he shifts from foot to foot, his need to speak up and say something about her.

 

“I’ve made Dawn a partner. I’ll be running JPR with her, she’ll remain here while I remain elsewhere. Don’t ever think that I would fucking do anything to harm her. I haven’t seen her since before this happened. I’ve only spoken to her on the phone and through email, she’s safe. I wouldn’t harm the love of your life, you already have your own tragic love story. No need for me to make it even more so.” Anders walks to the bar, everyone moving out of his way. He waves them off as he leans over and grabs a bottle. He doesn’t even bother looking at the label.

 

“I knew this was coming, I can rely on all of you to be so fucking predictable. I’ll be out of the country as soon as I can. Cheers.” Anders pops the cap off, the lid clinking to the floor. He tilts his head back and downs a few shots in one go.

 

No one stops him but he feels Mitchell’s hand on the small of his back as they leave.

 

* * *

 

It’s a language he knows all too well, this ache. How it settles between his shoulder blades. They don’t speak about where they’re going, instead Anders’ drinks until his hands shake. Until he remembers his hands shaking in the emergency room when Axl was born. He remembers how nervous he was for someone else to be born into their family, how he wanted nothing more than to be able to protect him.

 

He remembers Ty’s scraped knees, how his blood bleed on the hardwood floor, crimson and cedar. Ty’s wide eyes. He remembers their mother whispering on the phone, his father screaming about where his liquor went. He remembers the fence that surrounded their house, the back seat of the car in the summer, how his legs would stick to the upholstery. Melted popsicles and hapless New Zealand skies, paper plates and sunshine. He remembers holding Ty at night, brushing his hair out of his face.

 

If he leaves then there's no complacency, no picking up orange juice on the way home.  There is no _home._ He’s never really believe in the concept of it but he’s been in New Zealand his whole life.

 

“Where are you going?” Mitchell asks.

 

“I have to say goodbye to Ty.”

 

* * *

 

Ty answers the door, his jaw set, the skin over his knuckles stretched tight.

 

“Don’t invite me in.”

 

“What?” Ty looks confused for a moment, his fists unclenching as he takes a step back.

 

“I can’t come in if I’m not invited.” _You're safe this way._

 

“What do you want?”

 

“To say goodbye.”

 

Ty steps out of the doorway and sits down against the wall next to Anders, they stay like that for hours, sharing stories and sharing silence.

 

They talk about how the TV used to look burnt out after watching it for too long, how the screen would still glow even though it was turned off. Ty laughs as he talks about an old horror movie with a lizard, the entrails of it being dragged across the screen and how he had nightmares that night because of it. They both remember books, how it was the only way to escape the chaos unfolding in the house.

 

“I think you died long before this.” Ty has his head rested against the wall, his head slightly turned to look at Anders. He takes in his styled hair and wonders if Anders did it himself out of memory of it Mitchell did it for him. His chest aches at the idea, there’s something tragically beautiful about it. He can’t imagine Anders letting anyone do his hair but he thinks that Anders would let Mitchell and it brings him some hope in the situation.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“You lost a lot when we were kids, it’s what made you how are you. You stopped asking questions, you stopped doing what normal kids do. We all did in a way. You’re different with him, not necessarily better but you’re different.” Ty, waxing poetic. Anders gives him a weak smile at this, that he was the one so cut out for love and dealt the worst card of them all.

 

“You know when you care about someone and you let them do things that normally irritate you but for some reason when they do it, it's endearing or some shit? He likes old black and white movies and the static that comes with record players. He leaves cigarettes everywhere and mud on the fucking floor but I can’t imagine it not being there.” His spine is a kite string and Mitchell holds the tether as he soars.

 

Ty laughs, his head thrown back, eyes to the sky. “That feeling I know all too well.”

 

And New Zealand will be an empty echo, much like his childhood bedroom, residue of him clinging to the streets.

 

“I don’t want you gone forever. I can’t imagine any situation where you aren’t you.”

 

“I’m still me, actually, I don’t know what the fuck I am. I feel like me. Mitchell says it changes you though. It makes me wonder what he was like before all of this. Probably just as infuriating.” Anders says it but he doesn’t believe it. He thinks Mitchell must have been someone charming.

 

“I’ll miss you.” Ty rests his hand on Anders’ knee.

 

“Gay.”

 

* * *

 

“Would you go back home, if I asked, would you do it?” Anders knows how Mitchell feels about Ireland, but he figures if Mitchell can say yes to this then he’ll _know._

 

That’s what it all stems down to. Something tragic about ownership, a power play, a game of chess that either of them can’t win. Who belongs to who?

 

Anders always belonged to Mitchell, ever since that day in the bathroom at the club. It’s funny he thinks that his life started and ended in a bathroom. Fourteen years stretch into geography.

 

Mitchell who has wanted to be human for so long, using people for anchors during his storm. People are what caused him to run, how he loved so big and so much that it felt that he couldn’t love them at all.

 

This is a new chance, This would be running together.

 

Mitchell thinks of the car alarm, how it blared in their ears during their first kiss. The bathroom tiles, neon lights. The diner with the stupid names on the menus and space puns. The Indian take out place and the fluorescent lights, how the third Thursday of every month Anders and Mitchell order from there but never mention the weight of what that place means to them.

 

He imagines them somewhere cold, somewhere that has drafty windows and they drink warm beer.

 

“Yes.” Neither one of them know if he actually means it but when he kisses Anders, he kisses him like they belong to each other.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there will be a part four but it will be a bit before I start it cause I really need to clear some of my other wips out of the way.


End file.
